


Liar, Liar, Soul on Fire

by EvenfallClose



Series: Coldfire Verse [1]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: AND THAT, All of them are, All the OCs - Freeform, And then I got trashed on soulmarks, Because he's awesome, Canon Compliant, Character thinks in parentheses, Epic out of order series, Except getting this out of my head, F/M, I am my own grandpa, Just like half the characters, Many many grains of salt, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant - Season 8, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Sociopathic characters, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, There are 7+ billion people in the world, Unreliable Narrator, Well it started that way anyway, What-If, because, duh - Freeform, except for the soulmarks, more tags as I think of them, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5124941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvenfallClose/pseuds/EvenfallClose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All a soulmark guarantees is a meeting. A thread in the wind that Fate has thrown into your path. It's up to you to grab it or not. Mostly. Sometimes, you don't get a choice. </p>
<p>Short soul shots in one crazy connected universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liar, Liar, Soul on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Amusingly, this is an AU of another verse in my head. I will eventually be posting that one too, but the great advantage of soulmarks is one-shots so, yes, this is happening. 
> 
> Also, this is meant to be mostly MCU and Buffy/Angel compliant, so if the characters seem way OOC to you, feel free to yell.
> 
> Soulmark basics in this verse:   
> People are born with their soulmarks.  
> Soulmarks are the first recognized communication between soulmates. Usually, they are the first words spoken and are in your soulmate's handwriting, but they aren't always words and they aren't always written.   
> Soulmarks start as outlines. They fill in with colors and patterns that represent your empathic perception of your soulmate when you meet. So the colors have the appropriate cultural associations for your culture and if you aren't capable of empathy your soulmark never fills in. There's a warm/burning sensation as they fill in.  
> Gold outlines for romantic bonds. Black outlines for platonic bonds. Gold and Black outlines means there's a choice involved.   
> Soulmarks fade to scars when your soulmate dies.   
> Blanks exist; no soulmark means your soulmate was eradicated before you were born. This happens when a Power gets it into their head to fuck with your life. (Ex. Cordelia Chase is a blank because of Jasmine)

Chapter 1: Lying Smiles

July 1999, Suei Café 

She never waits on him. His fanclub (girls and boy alike) would kill her, and no matter how much she likes to push buttons, her coworkers are far, far too easy to be interesting. Once she's mastered her boss maybe, learned the demon's language and drained her of her knowledge of the supernatural, of things that think they could be threats to her. Maybe then she'd take an interest in "Lindsey McDonald- L.A.'s best tipper and worst tease." and watch her co-workers hate and envy and turn into something even more predictable. As it is now, she's satisfied with the satisfaction she gets from their idiocy: the gratified, gratuitous tips she gets from the customers she rescues from abandoned frustration.

...and from the knowledge she has yet to share. That his attention is on her all the while they're watching him. It's not erotic. Not that he's unappreciative- his tastes run to blond and slim, if she's any judge (and she is), and he's certain to watch her walk away. But it's appreciation, not desire, and from what he watches, from the way his 'charming' smile, the one he uses on his fanclub (too easy), shifts to a smirk when he watches her playing the tables, the barely seen nod- acknowledgement or congratulations or just letting her know he saw; she isn't sure (can't tell that kind of thing without touching)- or raising of his coffee cup as she counts her money: Like recognizes like, she thinks. But he's not quite, not quite empty enough to be like her. More like his coffee cup, which is never less than a fifth full. Not until he's ready to walk out the door. And that's not his fanclub's doing.

And then it's her doing. Because a fairly ridiculous group of 14 come in together. They look like something out of Stepford (She'd watched the movie to learn about the lines between human, normal, and terrifying). But with much less color coordination. They all order four courses and always more than half the table thinks for ages before they mostly all order the same thing. It is the only challenge- pitiful, but still a challenge- she has had in this place, and she falls back on habits of repetition taught, and carefully does not flinch when she realizes she's been saying it aloud.

_ Y o u  d o  n o t  l o s e  c o n t r o l  o f  y o u r  w o r d s _ .

The litany seems to make them smile though, and smiling customers means bigger tips so she continues. "And you get one, and you get one, and you get one, and you get an other, and you get one and you get one."

He speaks to her first, after she serves the last of the desserts. She's tired now, and less in control by the second- a brush against her boss had revealed the threat- these are demons, demons with inherent OCD, who are easily provoked to bloody, vicious violence by simple things- _l ike a waitress getting an order wrong_\- she'd wondered why. This was Tania's section, but her boss had directed her to serve them. Her, because she was the one with the best chance of surviving it.

...she doesn't really fear, not like others do. But she gets angry. And frustrated. And nothing feeds her frustration like a threat she cannot kill, cannot destroy, cannot take apart with words and knives and thoughts and manipulation, cannot hide or run from, cannot burn.

His words cut through her frustration like a drill through a damn. That velvety Southern- Okie- drawl " **D o I get one?**" tagging on to her last "And you get one." like a hand on her ass, full of mocking charm and controlled amusement. " **Y ou'll get somethin'**"she hisses back, viper-quick, cattiness and cruelty, dark desire and deadly imprecations all crackling through the phrase, before she remembers to fake a smile, to freeze and hide the flames, to smother ardent Alabama in SoCal shores.

The raging frustration and building fury- two of the only emotions she can actually feel (physically)- she has to hide, because she didn't come this far to lose control now, distract her from the nigh undetectable pulse of warmth on her shoulder. And as she turns around to put her eyes back on the threat instead of the prey (and he is prey, now. She's interested, and she's going to make him beg before she's done with him.), she's too deep in her fantasies and her facade to see the shock- the sudden vulnerability- in his widened eyes, hidden not quite quickly enough by smoldering speculation and his native smug smirk. She'd missed him feeling his soulmark blaze with her colors- not that she'd have recognized it if she'd seen; her own mark still empty. She had no clue, no idea that he was hers. But he had no idea she was coming for him anyway.

.

.

.

_"There are many theories regarding the meaning of unfilled soulmarks. The romantics would have you believe that unfilled is unfulfilled: that, really, the bearer of the outline in question just hasn't met the right one and that meeting will fix everything. The bitter would say it is because such people don't have souls. In truth, the explanation is far more simple. Our colors represent our own instinctive empathic understanding of the souls we are fated to. Lacking instinctive empathy, a sociopath's soulmark cannot be filled, but it is present. It is my personal opinion, given the recognized tendency of sociopaths to fixate unerringly on their soulmates from the moment they are known to them as such, that whatever force, Fate or Fortune, gave us these marks also chose to give opportunity and choice. It is up to the mates to tell their sociopaths, by reaction or tell-and-show, because the sociopaths cannot be sure otherwise." ~ _Dr. Kiera Туману,_ Psyche: Soul and Mind, Chapter 6: Empty Souls _

**Author's Note:**

> This and the other verse really did start with a What If? What would it change if there was someone completely on Lindsey's side the whole time. From there, it exploded and performed a hostile takeover of the version of the Marvel Universe stored in my brain. Now I'm just trying to get it out.
> 
> Also, I'm writing this from research, not experience. So if it any point you encounter something I got completely wrong, please let me know so I can learn.


End file.
